[alphadevx]

In my experience, the latest computer I buy is always "the best computer I've ever owned". They get better every year, why is this still surprising?

[mbesto]

You must be new to Macs. I'm still on the MBP 2015 and it's "the best computer I've ever owned". Everything since then has technically upgraded parts, but the regressions (touchbar, butterfly keyboard mishaps, etc.) are not worth the upgrade.

That's why this is surprising.

[_ph_]

I just switched from a 2015 MBP to the current 16" MBP and it is an amazing computer and a significant upgrade towards the 2015 one. The keyboard is nice, the screen much better, great sound and speed. I also like the touchbar. So the 16" is an easy buy. Though of course, you now might want to wait for an ARM based one.

[c03]

So the title should be "Apple actually improved their product with their latest computer, and I am surprised" ?

[ja27]

My 15" 2015 MBP was the best bang-for-the-buck Mac I've owned. Got it used (to avoid getting a butterfly keyboard MBP), almost max CPU, max RAM, swapped in an NVMe SSD and a semi-permanent microSD card.

I love my 16" MBP but wasn't blown away by the upgrade. Touchbar is meh and mostly in my way. Speakers are a big win. Keyboard is a tossup but at least I avoided the butterfly era. Everything else is just noticeably better but not a "wow" better. My biggest annoyance is fan noise when attached to a monitor. Running at native panel resolution seems to help.

I'm looking forward to the 16" class M1.

[VectorLock]

My 2015 MBP is better than my 2018 MBP by a country mile.

[dayvid]

I LOVE my 13" 2015 MBP and only stopped using it because of keyboard errors. With that said, I believe the new Macbook Air and Macbook Pro have the Magic Keyboard which I think is essentially the same as the 2015 Macbook Pro keyboard and more up-to-date (though maybe not upgradeable).

I recently bought a Zephyrus G14 which I think is one of the closer equivalents to a 13" MBP for Windows with a powerful GPU.

[acjohnson55]

My 2010 MBP 15" is still my favorite.

[criveros]

You adapt to those changes with time.

[kgwgk]

The latest computer is usually not "the best you've ever owned" when you "downgrade" from last-year top-shelf to entry-level.

[derimagia]

This isn't going to be as common. Either way it's not surprising.

[procinct]

Generally this is surprising because the user bought the "Air" model instead of his usual "pro" model which is much more expensive. The impressive part here is that the air outperforms last years pro (according to the author) which is 3x the price.

[DennisAleynikov]

this is what people meant prior to the m1 coming out with "macs are a horrible deal"

they used to be priced at roughly 3x markup compared to the market. they finally fixed their co-dependency with intel and suddenly wow the price gouging goes out the door because gasp the macbook air could have always been the pro it was just never possible with using old chips.

ANYTHING using arm absolutely FLIES

open your eyes people

[mojuba]

Not always. I'm somewhat disappointed with my 2020 16" MBP that I bought after owning a 2015 MBP for 5 years. This one is faster for sure, but also noisier, gets hot often for no good reason (even with the lid closed for the whole day!), takes 7-8 seconds to wake my Eizo monitor, while the previous one would take only a second to do the same.

To be honest and quite unexpectedly the 16" MBP is not the best Mac I ever owned, despite the hype. The display is amazing, the speakers are incredible for a laptop, I'm also glad the T arrow keys are back, but everything else is a disappointment.

[_ph_]

Strange, I did exactly the same switch recently and consider the 16" MBP a significant upgrade from my old machine. It even stays completely silent most of the day while the old one would constantly spin the fans.

[seanmcdirmid]

That was true 10 or 20 years ago for sure. These years it’s more of a meh, “hey look the keyboard works well again.”

[cenal]

I went from a 2017 MBP 15" to a 16" 2019 MBP late last year and the keyboard is clearly a big selling point but lets not forget how much better the audio is either. It's under played in most reviews but it's a night and day difference. I feel like I'm in a home theater every time I use it.

[colmvp]

The recent MacBook Pro's are IMO not superior to the experience of using the first Retina MBP's. I'd rather have that model of MBP's, only with performance increases and without the Touch Bar.

[hombre_fatal]

This is the predictable HN response I envisioned after reading the title.

You'd start to have a point if they were only talking about raw performance. But they aren't.

Also, raw performance alone doesn't make things better. My Windows PC almost has the best parts on the market yet things don't always feel faster. The UI even feels slower than my previous one. It's my latest PC, but it's not the best computer I've owned.

[alphadevx]

I would "start to have a point", really? I will try harder next time.

[Traster]

I don't know what your experience buying computers has been, but my 2012 MBA was the best I'd ever owned. The 2015 MBP was worse, the 2018 MBP I owned was worse than that. The Thinkpad X1 carbon I bought after that was the best I've ever owned, and every time I see my wife struggling with her Macbook I'm glad I finally ditched that rubbish.

[Wowfunhappy]

Why was the 2015 MBA worse than the 2012 for you? They're basically the same design, and of course the 2015 would be more powerful in absolute terms.

(My primary laptop is a 2014 MBA, and I previously owned ones from 2012 and 2015.)

[ValentineC]

> The 2015 MBA was worse, the 2018 MBP I owned was worse than that.

Was it just the butterfly keys, or some other things too?

[ValentineC]

> They get better every year, why is this still surprising?

If my pre-butterfly keys MacBook stopped working some time between 2015 and 2019, and I had to get a replacement, I wouldn't consider the MacBooks produced during that era to be "better".

[ianai]

Uh the dell xps 13 I bought in 2016 definitely refutes this experience. That machines touchpad singularly ruined the experience. It’d ghost swipe in strange ways. It was very user hostile. Also there’s the long stagnation of performance during the previous decade.

But generally I agree with you. I just think it’s important to remember it’s not all been a monotonic function of good.

[Fricken]

Your experience apparently doesn't include the first paragraph of the article.

[The_Colonel]

I specifically remember the year laptops went from 16:10 displays to 16:9 because ... reasons. Laptops did not get better that year.

Now moving from 16:9 to 16:10 (or 3:2) is called an innovation ...

[mumblemumble]

> They get better every year

For us Apple users, this stopped being true about 4 years back.

[DennisAleynikov]

people don't remember good

also people have been absolutely IGNORING the massive speed gains and battery life of say an ARM chromebook or surface pro X

apparently only apple does good when they modify the ISA for x64 memory instructions to not have to be emulated so they can pretend rosetta is miles ahead of other virtualization when its hw based...

[matthewmacleod]

apparently only apple does good when they modify the ISA for x64 memory instructions to not have to be emulated so they can pretend rosetta is miles ahead of other virtualization when its hw based...

Those sneaky bastards – making their products perform better by introducing new features*! Whatever next?

[tomjen3]

A chromebook is a toy and a surface pro X is a terrible computer. Apple wasn't the first to transition to ARM, but they were the first to do it right. If they added things to the hardware to enable this, so what?